A Piece of Lake Came Loose

and not the frozen kind, but a sloshing
chunk of murky water and algae and
one very bewildered frog. I didn’t mean
to knock it out of place. Our carelessness
can manifest in such inconvenient ways.
I tried to jostle it back into place
so that no one would notice the
upended edges
of the water and
the extra-bulged eyes
of that poor frog. I had to jam
a piece of myself into the gaps to fill it in.

Bedtime Routine

Every night, I
stitch back closed
the rips in the day
with dental floss.
I start in the middle
and navigate
around all
the tender hollows
as if they were
left there
from lost
baby teeth.

Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she works as an analyst and lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award. Her mini-chapbook The Inca Weaver’s Tales is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press in their New Cosmologies series. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.